The present invention relates to a transportation apparatus for carrying goods such as golf bags and transporting the same automatically along a predetermined course such as a path on a golf course.
Hitherto, various apparatuses have been used in transporting golf clubs, a number of golf bags, and other goods along golf courses, such as hand carts for golf bags, electrically driven vehicles, mono-rail type vehicles, lift-type vehicles and devices known commercially by the name "Green Boy".
There are serious disadvantages to each of these apparatuses. Hand carts for carrying multiple golf bags require excessive attention and energy from a caddy. Electrically driven golf carts, for example, can cause serious damage to the fairway of the golf course so that it has been necessary to lay paved paths or rails along the golf course to provide a passage for such vehicles. The other known transportation apparatuses as noted above require rails and posts of considerable height from the ground.
The laying of paved lanes, rails, posts and so forth not only degrade the landscape of the golf course, but also can interfere with play since golf balls impinging on the paved paths or rails usually rebound irregularly, thereby interfering with the pleasure of the game. The provision of golf carts and paths also prolong the playing time, since the paths usually are spaced substantially from the fairway or rough onto which the golf balls fall. In some cases, the golfer is obliged to drive his electric golf cart or the like across the lawn (fairway or rough). Electric golf carts typically have a weight in excess of 85 Kg and frictionally engage the lawn with great force during acceleration and deceleration, and can cause serious damage to the lawn costing considerable sums of money to repair.
One known transportation system in which vehicles follow a predetermined path and can be disconnected from the path as needed is the streetcar. The streetcars of San Francisco, for example, each have a grip for clamping and unclamping a cable which runs underground, to cause the streetcars to run and stop as desired.
Such a cable system would, however, have serious problems as applied to transporting golf bags on a golf course. It is necessary to lay and stretch the cable, e.g. rope, to closely follow the landscape, including planar ground (horizontal or inclined), protruding mountainous ground, and concave ground at the transient areas between the planar ground and the protruding ground. The cable can be contained in the planar or protruding ground without substantial difficulty by supporting the cable from the lower side thereof. It is also possible to lay and stretch the cable along a curved path by employing a multiplicity of pulleys contacting the surfaces of the cable along the curved segments thereof. However, where the ground is concave, the cable may jump up above the ground surface unless the cable is held down by a pulley contacting the upper surface of the cable. In a streetcar of the type mentioned above, a grip mounted to the streetcar clamps the cable from the upper side thereof. This movement of the grip on the cable is hindered by pulleys which press downward on the upper side of the cable. Therefore, in the segments of the cable where the pulleys are employed for preventing the cable from jumping up, i.e. along the concave ground segments, the grip is temporarily disengaged from the cable and then caused to reengage the cable after the vehicle has cleared such segment by inertia or otherwise, e.g. by manual force.
As a result of these characteristics of prior cable systems, several difficulties present themselves. For example, the vehicles are required to repeatedly stop, pull up on the grip and clamp the cable when applied to a complicated landscape such as one having a number of crests and valleys. This prior system therefore can be used only on a simple landscape or on an artificial surface.
Also, the conventional golf cart, for example, hand cart, motor-operated cart, mono-rail cart or Green Boy cart, has been employed for carrying four golf bags mounted in parallel and a covering sheet has been used to protect the golf bags in the event of rain. When the golf clubs are inserted and removed from the bags, the entire sheet must be removed from covering the bags. Although the cover can be set at a high position in order to permit the golfers to easily place their clubs in and move their clubs from their golf bags, such a cover could cause the stability of the cart to be affected by the wind since a high center of gravity would increase the tendency of the cart to become unstable and blow over. Furthermore, if the cover is mounted higher, there is a greater likelihood that the rain will blow under the cover onto the golf clubs. Another disadvantage of the above-described multi-golf bag golf cart is that as a result of the parallel arrangement of the bags, the golfers must take turns approaching their bags to obtain or exchange golf clubs. Finally, it is noted that if each golfer carries his own umbrella, he would generally be required to turn his umbrella over to the care of another each time he approaches his ball for a golf shot.